The objective of this proposal is to respond to RFA HD-93-09 by examining the effectiveness of early interventions for children with reading difficulties. Children who are either at risk for reading problems or who have identified reading disabilities will be treated, including kindergarten children, children with identified reading disabilities in grades 2 and 3, and children who are served in Chapter 1 programs in grades 1 and 2 who are underachieving in reading. Five treatment studies of these three groups of children will be conducted in a large, culturally diverse public school setting. The first study will address kindergarten children who are at risk for reading problems because of social, cultural, and other factors related to literacy. These children will be enrolled in a model kindergarten program with a curriculum oriented towards teaching relevant precursors of reading ability and followed through grade 3 to identify the degree to which early intervention can reduce the morbidity of social and cognitive risk factors. A second study will provide early interventions for children with identified reading disabilities. These children will be entering the 2nd and 3rd grades and will receive programs emphasizing either synthetic phonics, a combination of synthetic and analytic phonetics, or whole words. Each child will be assessed to determine individual differences in cognitive profiles to address possible treatment by subtype interactions. The third study will address children enrolled in Chapter 1 programs in grades 1 and 2 who are underachieving in reading. These children will be placed into two different curriculums and will receive one of two types of interventions representing a reading recovery program and a curriculum driven, practice oriented intervention. Study 4 reverses the order of curriculums for the Chapter 1 children to determine the efficacy of curriculums based on synthetic phonics, analytic phonics, or whole language if preceded or succeeded by another curriculum. For the fifth study, the interventions developed in Studies 2 and 3 will be crossed and utilized with new cohorts to determine if interventions are equally effective across children with identified learning disabilities and children who are low achieving and also at cultural risk. For each study, growth curve methodologies will be used to model change and effects of intervention at the level of the individual. Careful assessment of covariables related to outcome will be completed, including attention deficit disorder, sociodemographic status, and behavioral/affective adjustment. Dependent variables will be growth of phonological and orthographic skills, semantic language, and visual/spatial skills as well as actual attainment of academic abilities. With these studies, 4 specific aims can be addressed, including 1) prevention; 2) effectiveness of early interventions for children identified as reading disabled; 3) effectiveness of early intervention for socially disadvantaged children with low reading achievement; and 4) comparison of early interventions across reading disabled and low achieving/socially disadvantaged children.